GEORGE KENNAN, the dean of American diplomats, called “The Gulag Archipelago”, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s account of Stalin’s terror, “the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levied in modern times”. By bearing witness, Solzhenitsyn certainly did as much as any artist could to bring down the Soviet system, a monstrosity that crushed millions of lives. His courage earned him imprisonment and exile. But his death on August 3rd…prompts a question. Who today speaks truth to power””not only in authoritarian or semi-free countries such as Russia and China but in the West as well?
The answer in the case of Russia itself is depressing. Russia’s contemporary intelligentsia””the should-be followers of the example of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and the other dissident intellectuals of the Soviet period””is not just supine but in some ways craven (see article). Instead of defending the freedoms perilously acquired after the end of communism, many of Russia’s intellectuals have connived in Vladimir Putin’s project to neuter democracy and put a puppet-show in its place. Some may genuinely admire Mr Putin’s resurrection of a “strong” Russia (as, alas, did the elderly Solzhenitsyn himself)….
Read it all.
The Economist: Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s example””and the heirs who failed him
GEORGE KENNAN, the dean of American diplomats, called “The Gulag Archipelago”, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s account of Stalin’s terror, “the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levied in modern times”. By bearing witness, Solzhenitsyn certainly did as much as any artist could to bring down the Soviet system, a monstrosity that crushed millions of lives. His courage earned him imprisonment and exile. But his death on August 3rd…prompts a question. Who today speaks truth to power””not only in authoritarian or semi-free countries such as Russia and China but in the West as well?
The answer in the case of Russia itself is depressing. Russia’s contemporary intelligentsia””the should-be followers of the example of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and the other dissident intellectuals of the Soviet period””is not just supine but in some ways craven (see article). Instead of defending the freedoms perilously acquired after the end of communism, many of Russia’s intellectuals have connived in Vladimir Putin’s project to neuter democracy and put a puppet-show in its place. Some may genuinely admire Mr Putin’s resurrection of a “strong” Russia (as, alas, did the elderly Solzhenitsyn himself)….
Read it all.